Maintenance Support Strategy

A Middle East dealer for Harris was required to initiate a program of in-country repair of Harris radio in order to alleviate the need to return faulty equipment to the US via an RMA due to a lengthy, bureaucratic and costly export customs process.

Black Dog produced a strategy paper for the supplier dealer company that included a costed three-phase plan that provided an immediate short term capability and culminated in a dedicated in-country maintenance facility complete with test equipment and floor plans of ESD repair and maintenance stations, ITAR controlled areas, storage & logistics space, and administration section.

This solution required a top-down assessment of the roots of the problem. A strategic understanding of the perspectives of all the stakeholders, including government departments, was needed in order to create a workable and repeatable solution. Once this was communicated to those, some of whom were unaware they were part of the block, and a ‘champion’ from the user community was selected to own the process a viable way forward was achieved. This released a ‘dam’ of faulty equipment that was growing without a path to repair.